Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

That's right—out your way, Member for Gorton. It was an incredible set of stories—absolutely fantastic. There was a single mum with a couple of kids who said she can't study at home. She gets a bit of support so she can go to the study hub and actually get her assignments done and do her study, hungry as she is to complete her bachelor's degree.

And, of course, there is the needs based funding model. The ATEC will lead the implementation of needs based funding and the Managed Growth Funding System and work to progress that more joined-up tertiary system we need. The government is investing an additional $2.5 billion in the medium term to introduce the Managed Growth Funding System and a demand driven, needs based funding system. These are also big structural changes, because, in a more managed system, we're trying to swing the pendulum back to the middle. It's neither a centrally planned system bureaucratically controlled to the nth degree, where Canberra allocates all the students and all the courses, nor a largely deregulated system, where every institution has the same incentives and, frankly, where the big elephants—at times in the Go8 but also elsewhere—can go hunting and eat everyone else's food. We can't see a system where most of the students go to eight or nine universities, starving the others—which are critical for access in the suburbs and the regions—of students who are also bright. It is a more managed system, and that's what's come out of the accord and has broad support. Importantly, though, no university will be going backwards and universities with higher enrolments will get more support.

I'll just touch on the last couple of points. I heard some of the contributions; wearing my Assistant Minister for International Education hat, I'll make a couple of points. This bill is about building the house and getting the legal basis for the commission. There's work underway; the government has asked the interim ATEC to progress work, which it's doing with the sector, to look at the right approach for the domestic student allocations and the funding models. We've started to move towards needs based funding with regional loadings and equity student loadings. The ATEC is doing further work, and then that will come back in, or can come back in, in a subsequent bill.

Similarly, with the international student allocations, which a number of speakers have touched on, the ATEC should have a role in allocating international students as part of mission compacts. I make the point really clearly that each institution can have its own mission, its own mandate, to serve its community—whether that's a region or a part of a metropolitan area—and focus on its areas of excellence and research, the right blend of teaching, its international profile, offshore international partnerships. But what kind of cake are they trying to bake? What kind of entity are they trying to create? That's the mission compact. What's the vision? International students have to be part of that. Some universities want a very small percentage of international students; that's the kind of experience they want to create. Others are big, particularly in their postgrad—a lot of the Go8 are big globalised institutions—where they want a truly international experience in some of those courses. That's OK, but each university has to go through the discipline of articulating their vision, their mission, what they're trying to create and get that agreed through the mission compact. There's more work to come, but I really commend this bill to the House. We'll have a look at what the Senate inquiry puts forward and listen to sensible suggestions, but this is a really big structural reform.

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